Both the Pintail and Fantail affect cover and moist ground,
so that, where both these luxuries exist, you will continually
flush both species at the same spot; but the difference between
them is that, while the Pintail if unable to get both his requirements
will stick to grass and such-like cover, even if there be
little perceptible moisture in the ground, the Common Snipe in
such a case will stick to the wet ground, even though there be
little perceptible cover there. The consequence is that, while
you often get both birds in precisely the same ground, you
will often find the Pintail apparently quite at home in dry
grass lands, stubbles and scrub jungle, where the Common Snipe
would never, except accidentally, occur, and again you find the
Fantail on almost bare mud banks of rivers and tanks, where
it is the rarest thing in the world to meet a Pintail.
Of course, I am well aware that, when much shot at and
occasiomdly, but rarely, at other times, the Common Snipe will
be found in dry cover some distance from water ; but this is
exceptional, whereas the Pintail is commonly and constantly
flushed in such localities.
If the bills of the two birds be carefully examined, I think
that this difference in habit will be better understood. The
Fantail has the end of the bill more or less spatulate, that is
to say, dilated and widened out ; and in the dry skin it will be
seen that the terminal inch of the upper, and even a greater
length of the lower mandible is closely pitted with small
semi-circular cavities. These arc not visible in the freshlykilled
bird, because, in life, these cavities are all filled up with
nervous matter—nerve knots terminating delicate thread nerves
permeating the bill and leading up to and joining the brain.
greater part of [he basin had dried so as to expose the mud. Although the general
average (including this day) is in these parts nearly 86 per cent, of Pintails to 14
per cent, of Fantails, on this occasion I shot 75 per cent, of Fans to 25 per cent,
of Pins ! My bag was not a large one, but it consisted of nearly all the Snipe
remaining al the above date.
" II.—Tins year I was. with a companion, encamped from 1st to 4th February at
a place in the Kadur district. We had only, on the evening of the 1st. time for a
shoil stroll by the edge of a drying-up tank, and in the mud we killed three couple,
all common. On Monday morning, 3rd, we were below a lank, some two miles off,
in grass, where we got five couple, all Pintail. In the evening got two couple more
off the mud all Fantail."—Chaths Mclnroy, Major.
"In the southern portions of the Peninsula, they chiefly affect swampy ground
and young paddy fields; and when these become dry and cut, they keep to dry
^RI«^ ground, with scrub jungle- I have frequently shol them in sugarcane fields
by keeping outside and sending in men and dogs to make them rise "—A. Theobald.
" I have included under one head the Common and Pintailed species of
Snipe; they are so very similar in general appearance that it is only by
very close inspection one observes that they differ at all one from the oilier.
—7 //. Baldwin.
•'Its note is quite different from that of the Common Snipe, and the flight is
rather slower and not so zig-zag.
••1 Hning ihe heat of the day, and sometimes when much shot at, it settles
in dry tracts of jungle, some hundreds of yards from the water [Í have also
seen this habit occasionally in the Common Snipe) ; and in hot days I have
found theni in high crops, probably on account of the shade."—IV. E. Brooks.
It is the drying-up of this nerve matter that reveals these
cavities. Clearly this elaborate nervous plexus, calculated to
make the end of the bill extremely sensitive, and this widening
out of the bill, so as to increase the size of the sensitive
area, point to a habit of obtaining the food almost entirely
in situations where the sense of sight will not avail; in the
case of this bird deep in the mud, where the bill has to do
the work of both eyes and hands. But the bill of the Pintail
is quite different; there is no dilation towards the tip and a
mere trace of the pits so conspicuous in the Fantail ; they
exist, but are very much smaller, involving a greatly diminished
sensitiveness, and cover a materially smaller area.
Moreover, the tip of the bill is stronger, the knob on the lower
surface of the tip of the upper mandible being thicker and
larger, and altogether the extreme tip of the mandible stronger.
Clearly this points to feeding habitually in harder ground,
and where the eyes can more materially assist in discovering
food, i.e., in drier places.
Nor is this a mere hypothesis ; the contents of the stomachs
sufficiently confirm this a priori argument. In the Pintail
you find all kinds of land organisms, grubs, caterpillars, small
insects, crustácea, shells and grass, as well as and more frequently
than worms, water grubs, aquatic insects, and tiny
water-shells and crustácea, which constitute the entire food (in
this country at any rate) of the Fantail.
Then as to the flight, I personally am perfectly certain
that, as a general rule, and under like conditions, the flight of
the Pintail is heavier and more direct than that of the Common
Snipe ; and in nine cases out of ten, you can, if due allowance
be made for existing conditions, tell at once the species of the
bird, before you draw trigger, simply by the flight. Of course
if you flush Pintail in a cold morning with a good wind, they
fly infinitely smarter than Fantail, rising in a dead calm under
a hot, mid-day sun ; or if you work Pintail on a wind they
will go off sharper and twisting more than Fantail worked
off the wind ; but I individually am certain that all conditions
being identical, the flight of the Pintail is more laboured, more
direct, and less zig-zaggy than that of the Fantail.
As to the notes of the two birds, I am at a loss to understand
how any one can assert that they arc identical. To my
ears they are as distinct as two sounds of the same class can
well be—that of the Pintail being sharper, and more screechy.
With birds flushed singly, within 25 yards, I would undertake,
with my eyes shut, to identify every bird that rose correctly.
Of course where half a dozen birds of each species are rising
at varying distances all round one, at the same time, or where
birds rise at long distances, no one, probably, could certainly
discriminate the sounds.
I do not think that, as a rule, Pintail afford the chance for